After worldwide journey, 'Forks' author brought home a new view – and new recipes

May 29, 2014

Updated May 28, 2014 6:40 p.m.

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Traveler, photographer and author Allan Karl rode his motorcycle in 35 countries around the world and wrote about it in “Forks: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine and Connection.” The book documents his travels on five continents as well as gives recipes from the locales he visited.
ROD VEAL
,
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Traveler, photographer and author Allan Karl rode his motorcycle in 35 countries around the world and wrote about it in “Forks: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine and Connection.” The book documents his travels on five continents as well as gives recipes from the locales he visited.
ROD VEAL
,
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Find out more

For more information about Allan Karl's intercontinental adventure and his book "Forks," visit worldrider.com.

Allan Karl’s motorcycle tells most of the story.

His BMW’s panniers are plastered with colorful stickers from Botswana, where the roads were an obstacle course of donkeys; Syria, before its civil war; Colombia, where machine-gun-wielding guerrillas escorted him to visit a waterfall; and Brazil, birthplace of the moqueca coconut fish stew that inspired him to write his two-wheeled travelogue and globe-trotting cookbook, “Forks.”

In three years, Karl logged 62,329 miles. He visited five continents and 35 countries. It was, as Karl writes in his book’s introduction, “an extreme route through a midlife crisis,” inspired by career dissatisfaction and a divorce that found him staring down a pair of metaphors. He had come to a fork in the road and responded by taking the path less traveled.

As a fellow motorcyclist and writer, I accompanied Karl, 53, on the last leg of his journey, joining him for a day ofriding and cooking in the lead up to publication of a book that’s been seven years in the making. “Forks” (WorldRider Publishing and Press; $39) is due out Tuesday.

We met in Newport Beach, near the postcard-perfect, ranch-style home where he commenced his journey in 2007.

“I closed the door, and the moving truck came down the street at the exact same time I was leaving on my bike. It was really weird,” said Karl, who started his trip traveling as far north as there was road – to Deadhorse, Alaska – before continuing through Canada, the U.S., South America, Africa and the Middle East.

His favorite country? “Usually, it was the one I was in or the one I just left,” said Karl, who went through 22 tires, six chains, three sets of brakes and 1,162 gallons of gas.

Evidence of that wear and tear was still present on the 2005 BMW F650GS Dakar he selected because of its oversized front wheel – a godsend for negotiating potholed roads without a bent rim. The right-hand mirror is still broken from the time it flew off its mount in Ethiopia, its WRLDRDR license plate slightly bent. It was otherwise heavily modified for the journey, with a more comfortable gel seat, lighter-weight exhaust, Garmin GPS and other systems he’s listed in an appendix for wanderlusting readers.

“I want people to expand their world view, to be open to new experiences, to new cultures. We sometimes get so afraid,” said Karl, who, since returning from his trip in 2010, makes part of his living as a speaker chronicling his travel experience. “When I went on this trip, everybody said, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. You’re going to get killed. You’ll be kidnapped. Your bike will be gone in the first month.’”

None of that happened. In fact, Karl said, the most dangerous experience he had during his trip was riding in the U.S.

“Too often we let fear become this huge blocker that prevents us from doing things we really want to do,” said Karl. “If you’re going to Detroit or Chicago or Dallas, you can go to Dar es Salaam. Step outside your comfort zone, because once you’re doing something new, you see things differently. If you don’t have your eyes open, then you’ll never go anywhere. ... We tend to close people out, particularly from other cultures.”

That attitude is mirrored in the book, which opens with an Irish proverb: “There are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met.”

The many friends Karl met are captured in hundreds of photos. Karl may have made his living in digital marketing, but his true passion is photography, and that shows in the hundreds of portraits and pictures in “Forks” that capture an authentic scene or sense of place, such as Bolivia, where he happened upon a station wagon topped with lamas, and Turkey, where the dusk skyline silhouettes a mosque.

During our day’s trip down the Southern California coast, Karl’s photographic eye was at work. He led us off our PCH route to scenic lookouts in Dana Point, Laguna Beach and Leucadia, where he now lives with his cat Dar (short for the Tanzanian capital he visited, Dar es Salaam).

In “Forks,” each of Karl’s destinations is arranged into a short chapter in the order in which he visited, illustrated with dozens of photos and chronicled with a three- or four-page travelogue anchored with a recipe that represents the national dish.

Karl often amused himself on the road by taking photographs of his meals, which served as the basis for recipes he later gathered from contacts he’d made on the road and by reaching out to chefs in the countries where the dishes originated. He tested all the recipes in the book in his own kitchen and by asking friends to also make them and provide feedback.

Karl hadn’t intended to write a cookbook, he said. It was only after he prepared his favorite Brazilian dish for friends that he decided to elevate his travel memoir with a foodie angle.

“I love food,” said Karl, who is a bit of a gourmand. His former wife ran a slow-food, fine-dining catering business. Karl financed his trip, in part, by selling off most of his 500-bottle wine collection.

The trip itself cost less than living in California, he said – about $1,000 per month; Karl often stayed at hotels that cost $2 per night, including breakfast.

It seemed only appropriate for the conclusion of our day trip that we cook the moqueca that inspired “Forks” – a book that is equally at home on a coffee table or in the kitchen and so well designed that it’s hard to believe it is self-published. Karl ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last year that raised tens of thousands of dollars, all of which went into the printing, and it shows.

The photo accompanying the moqueca recipe is salivatory, with its rich red broth and fresh fish.

With sun almost setting, Karl set to work chopping mounds of cilantro and parsley. I began slicing bell peppers. We threw them all into a stew of coconut milk, chicken broth and the secret ingredient that Karl said is difficult to find but makes all the difference – red palm oil.

I was tasked with arranging the fresh shrimp, scallops and monkfish into a Dutch oven and letting it simmer while we conversed. The scene was similar to hundreds Karl experienced on the road, enjoying good food, a glass of wine and the enlightening experience of meeting new people.

As Karl writes in “Forks,” quoting the author Henry Miller, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

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